Whoa, you're stuck going back to back. I'm sorry. That's a rough day when you're just over again,
then it's all done. We've done a lot of work today, and it's good, good work. I was reading your bio just a moment ago. I also like can you you had suggested some conversations. What? What did you think we want to talk about today? On the podcast, I'll be super exciting for you to talk about.
Well, it's always exciting to talk about my book, but tell me a little bit about your Tell me about your listeners and what's been resonating with them and maybe that'll help us pick a direction.
So we have about 3000 downloads every month into the podcast. I don't know who these people are. So we target the podcast to overachiever, perfectionist women who are hard on themselves. That's who my clientele is. Who listens to the podcast? It's like, one big question mark. We don't know but we know people listen to it. So we know the majority of them are in the States and in Canada, the second I'm in Canada, second largest number is in Canada but we've got people all over the world. So it's really hard for us to to know who is listening. But who I serve is perfectionist high achieving women who are really hard on themselves. And I teach them to just be self compassionate and come back to home to who they are let go of like crazy expectations continue to achieve from a place of enoughness
and right yes, Enough Enough. I love it. Yes. I love it. I love it. I love it. So
I often get peach for speakers and I know that in the pitch that you guys sent. It really spoke to me to to maybe have your perspective. Like in like, like it sounds like you also work with high performing humans.
Yes. Yeah, a lot of my clients are that's true.
So I don't know what what is your gift? How can we how can I get your gift out into the world?
Okay, so, um, I think that we should talk about the show of positive movement. I think that it's I think it should resonate with your women and here's why. Oftentimes, we get caught up in a victim story.
You know, I'm going to stop you right there. I want to start recording because this is amazing already. Okay. recording in progress. All right, tell me again, but why will this episode be
powerful for my audience to hear? We get caught in our victim stories. We're as human beings we are exceptionally good storytellers. You know, we have all this marketing stuff where we think we're teaching people how to tell stories, but the truth is, we are really good at telling stories. And one of our favorite stories is is a story about I can't because somebody else needs to, okay and the show a positive movement. is all about which should resonate also with high performing individuals standing in your agency in your power and catching yourself in this conversation of looking outside. In blaming outside and looking for fix outside of yourself and in recognizing, I am capable, I am competent, and I know what I want. I know what I need. And the place I'm going to start is me. I'm going to start being who I need to be to achieve the happiness and the fulfillment and the gratification and the validation that I need. And when I start showing up positive for myself, it's going to ripple out to others around me. And it's going to make an impact on others and it's going to invite them to join me and we're going to take back our power and take back our workplace because we have that capacity in ourselves.
Okay, so this is so in line with what I coach on actually my program is called be the CEO of your life. The name of this podcast is be the CEO of your life. Because I profoundly believe in the positive side effects that one can gain in their own life. And one says I'm the CEO, I'm going to make decisions and I'm going to begin to create a life that I want responses to the life I've got that actually that I like. So let me just quickly introduce who you are watching the podcast and then we just carry on with this conversation I can already like I kind of already know I'm gonna like you and they're also going to, but they will be the ones to tell us so you guys if you if you listen to this episode or you find it helpful, interesting. Let us know that you liked it. Give us a review. Give us a thumbs up Come say hi on Instagram. Tell me that you liked this episode. Let us know. Rita earn Ernst. Say that well. I just want to say that she's a guest today and I'll tell you more about about her in a moment. But she just told me who's your audience is like, I don't know. All I know is that we have two to 3000 people downloading the episode every month but I don't know that
smart amazing. People all go download your episodes,
right? Yes, yes, they are. That because they keep coming back for more great information. And it's because of hiring people like you Rita who are passionate about sharing their gifts with the world who are excited to be sharing and so I'm so happy that you're here. For those of you listening. Rita is an organizational consult owns an organization, organizational consulting practice that emphasizing it further. I can't talk today. All right, refocused. You're so excited for this conversation. Your tongue tied. I know. It's funny, please yourself, tell them the name of your company what you do, and then we just dive in. Help me help them out.
Absolutely. So hello, I am Reed Ernst. I am the author of Shoah positive I am an organizational psychologist. I own my own practice called Ignite your extraordinary and for those of you that are unfamiliar, organizational psychology is about taking the Principles of Psychology. So behavioral theory, motivation, theory, learning theory, personality theory, all of those elements, even some neuroscience in there and looking at how people come together in the workplace, to create and serve and and make things happened collectively. So going from individual into collective outcomes, collective delivery, collective performance, and that's been my whole career. I've done that inside of corporations, and I've done that independently as a consultant.
And that is why she's here. lesson we should always choose ourselves. Nobody can speak with more passion about who we are and what we do then ourselves. So thank you for introducing yourself read I am happy very happy that you are in sharing in the episode i Let's just keep going down the path of I want to I wonder if you could give us the beta that help us differentiate between positive psychology and then the positive movement that you were talking about if he's the one on the same? Can you help us just I know some people who've reached out to me say positive psychology is toxic or done feeling this way?
Have you heard that? I have not that that makes me think they don't understand what positive psychology is. Because I am going in March. I'm going to the World Happiness summit in Lake Como Italy, and it's filled with positive psychology experts that I am so excited to drink in their wisdom. So let's just dispel that little myth about toxic toxicity to attach to positive psychology because the foundation of psychology is mental health. And it's it's almost like a medical approach. And so we are looking for a problem. We're offering a solution. We're looking for a problem we're offering a solution, right? That's how medical works. And so for the longest time, the focus of psychology, the question we were asking is, what's wrong with people? Where is their wrong? What is out of place? And let's fix what's wrong. Positive Psychology said maybe we don't need to fix maybe we need to find what's right. Maybe we need to reinforce what's right. Maybe we need to lean into and grow what's right. How do we notice what's right, what's working, and how do we emphasize and manifest more of that, instead of exclusively using our focus to find all the problems and fix them? Oh, what do you think about that? Oh,
guy, I agree with you. Like if I'm not a psychologist, but I'm a clinical social worker and I've worked in clinical work for a long time. And if I had to identify as like, what will be the pattern I fall, I will say it will be very, very much close to positive psychology understanding what you understand, but I really want you to say to say it, because this is this is truly what I've heard from from people
and they actually, let me tell you, I actually had this moment of panic. After after I wrote my book, and I worked with a friend of mine who is a phenomenal copywriter. And we were I was trying to decide on you know titling your business. titling your book. These are equally difficult kinds of things. And she was like, You need a really good hashtag that you can just own and so I have been playing around with all of these ideas for the book title. And she like, was going through and she's like, I like hashtag show up positive. I think you could totally own it. And that's how we got to the name of the book. And then it just felt like it exploded everywhere. This toxic positivity conversation. And I was like, oh, no, people are gonna like see this book and they're gonna think oh my god, it's one of those toxic positivity things. She's the one
everybody's been talking about.
Another one of those people saying slap a smile on your face, and you know, just pretend pretend it'll be okay. And eventually it will be okay. And I just for those of you listening, that is not that is antithetical to the message of my book. And my idea of show up positive but, you know, for me, and I give some examples in the book, showing up positive is sometimes being willing to have the most difficult conversation because showing up positive is showing up for yourself. When you when you start showing up for your truth, for your integrity for the person that you want to look in the mirror and be proud of. When you start allowing her to shine and you stand up for her. Sometimes that means you've got to say that's not okay. It's not okay for you to make sexist jokes around me where it's not okay, for you to make fun of disabilities. Whatever it might be, it's okay for you to stand up for those things and that does not make you negative because you're naming that issue. Right? So positivity is about it's about that alignment of self that you you know, that your your head and your heart are in our sync in synchrony and your experience that people are experiencing you in the world in that synchronous way.
And I love that differentiation of positive doesn't mean you're faking happiness. It means the side effect of doing the thing that you're doing will have a positive, like Yes, it'll be positive for you. Or the relationship or your health. And that doesn't always equal easy. or school or smiley, rainbows and butterflies love that. I actually just came off coaching a client of mine, and it's like it was perfect, perfect person to coach just before seeing you. Because she said, I am trying to become aware of how we ended up in such an argument. My husband and I, and I keep asking myself, What did I do wrong? What did I do wrong? And I just couldn't figure it out. And I'm like you ask a lousy question. Your brain just quit. I was like, I'm not meaningful to anything. And so tell us a little bit more about how can how can I human who's listening to us be thinking about okay, so I get it. You guys are saying Being positive means also doing difficult things that are gonna take me out of my comfort and if you just said that this is not like the medical system, we're going to find what's wrong with you, how are you broken and fix that? but rather we're going to look into what is good with me. What like Do you have any steps that you will ask people to follow on what can they do to show up positively whereas if they're in this house of knowing that my high achieving as I'm sure your clients do your patients to constantly rule live or achieve by by noticing where their deficits are and just going full force into like, you know, mitigating or compensating for what's wrong, quote unquote, Ron, and you're proposing something differently. So I want to know, like, tell us a little bit more about this.
So one of the things that I did when I wrote the book and this was actually the core idea behind my book, it's written in two parts. And part two of the book is a repository of 50 ways that you could show up positive for yourself. So there are 50 inspirational words, and I sat down one day and I just started brainstorming the list and I came up with over 300 experiences, ways that we can show up positive in our lives and in our workplaces. And I picked 50 of those for the book. And and I think for every person, the journey is absolutely your unique journey. Different things are going to resonate with you at different times and periods in your life. But what is important is you notice where you want to increase or improve this, this, this feeling of this experience that you're creating for yourself, and you want to really intentionally and deliberately work on that for for an extended period of time. So my book isn't like okay, day one, I open up the book and I read the first word, I've got my book here. So I'm looking I'm trying to remember what the very first word is. So the first word is amplify, okay, today I'm going to amplify and then tomorrow, I'm going to applaud and then on Wednesday, I'm going to be aware and on Thursday, I'm going to believe you can't just zip through it, right? You you need to really sit in this experience for some time and really work on the practice in a deliberate way. And so in sometimes that is a challenge for high achievers, high achievers want that instant gratification and you're gonna get gratification but you can't get that dose of gratification and say, Well, I'm done. I got that. You really need to invest. It's like It's like going to the gym I in fact, I use that analogy in the book. I'm like it's calisthenics, for your mindset working on your show up positive behaviors. And what you're doing is you're building this bank account you can draw upon so when things get really tough, we are biologically This is where the psychology comes in. We are biologically designed to give more time and attention to negative experiences in our life. We fixate on them, we think about them, you know you're driving in the car, you're replaying that negative conversation. With your spouse, your co worker, whomever, you're fixing dinner, you're thinking about it, it sticks in your head, right? It's it stays with you, you carry it, you feel tension in your body. When you think about it, all of those things happen. And it's part of our biology. It's part of our system that we needed. When we were cave dwellers, that we were everyday fighting for our lives, that that oldest part of your brain is still one of the strongest, most active parts of your brain. And the way that we overcome this biological tendency to fixate on the negative things is we got to give it lots of positive messages to give attention to right so there is it's the rule of four or five right you it takes four to five positive things to overwrite one negative thing in our heads. So you get you've really got to do the work on on giving putting lots of positive deposits. Noticing you want to start catching yourself you want to start catching others creating positive experiences around you trait retraining your brain it's calisthenics. So it's the same thing. You don't go into the gym and lift one lift weights one day and the next day go in and benchpress 200 pounds over your head right? You have to build up to that you have to you have to train the muscle for a very long time. It's the same. It's the same idea. And you know, what happened is the experience that we went through across the globe, in the pandemic, just really magnified all the discontent and uneasiness in our lives. Those are all negative messages, and we got really fixated on them. And then we got into a lot of habits around noticing and paying attention to the things that were making us unhappy and oh, by the way that just made us notice more things. So then we start seeing these crazy images on TV like the woman who walks into the Walmart and like loses it over the facemask and tearing down the display and, you know, people getting in fights on airplanes, and you know all of this craziness it's it's it's because people just fell into this habit of really giving attention in a way that they hadn't before. Because there were so many more signals and we lost some things that are pretty important to us as humans. We lost our our connectivity to other people. We We actually lost something else, which is a bit of our self esteem and self worth because we knew how to navigate life. And then we had to learn a new way of navigating life. I mean, I don't know how many times I turned around at the door of the grocery store like oh my gosh, I don't have my mask. I gotta go back to my car, get my mask and go back in.
Why did I wear lipstick now? My mascot weren't
such a weapons moment, right? Yeah, absolutely. So, so, so we felt clumsy. We didn't feel as competent and as a shirred and as confident as we were used to. And so whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not. Our brains fell into this very old, prescriptive fight or flight mode. very ancient to our biology. Yeah. And we're climbing back out of that. You just
made me think of something I gave a talk to an organization recently. And I was asked to speak because our work I'm in Canada and our federal government just announced to all its employees that it's happening. They're back to the office, and servants they call federal servants are like the worker the employees are freaking out. They are resisting the change. They're feeling threatened by the change. And I was thinking, My God, it's only been two years, not how have that not been the normal. Their normal was to go into the office. And we were equally freaking out when we were told to stay home. And now that two years have been in this routine is almost like made us lose our coping mechanism to commute, to have to get dressed, to have to do laundry on the weekends. Like the things that were happening for years and years are not happening. So I wonder if there's any any insight from you, especially I know it also worked with you consult with organizations, any tips of advice for people who really did get impacted by this new routine of reality? And it's, it's coming to an end and people are gonna have to go back into the different areas that maybe they had already closed off and said, well, I need to go into the office. This seems to be like a try to right now. To go back to how can we help them cope with that? What are your thoughts?
Well, I think that you're naming something that is very spot on true and is a growing conversation of this call back into the normal workplace and people are very resistant for all the reasons that you said and in some cases, maybe rightly so. But I think that as employers, what I would say is employers really need to recognize this as the significant change that it is and they need to have some grace and now is a good time to be on a listening tour. If you're in leadership inside of your organization. Stop knowing and start getting curious and start listening. I'm not saying that you can fix all the issues and some of them may not be yours to fix. But empathy can go a very long way. And so that working parent, especially a single parent, who has to now find childcare, I don't know what it's like in Canada in the United States. It's still very difficult. Oh, it is to find childcare. So trying to find childcare, it's probably going to cost you a lot more money. So the whole economics of your situation. And this whole just getting kids up and ready and out the door and yourself ready and out the door and lunches and commuter traffic and all those things. Do not underestimate how much stress and how much difficulty that is inserted into people's lives. Yes, people knew how to do that. And they did it. Because that was just what everybody was expected to do. And so you grow up, you get a big person job and this is what you're expected to do and you figure it out and you do it. But we gave people insight into this idea that you know what, I can contribute, I can do a phenomenal job for my employer, and I don't have to do all that stuff. So yes, for some people, it's like why I don't understand and do you understand what this is? what the challenges are that this is creating for me. And so I think for employers flexibility is really that place that you meet in the middle and I think for us as workers, what we need to come into that conversation with is a is the where's that? Where is the flexibility? Where what are we asking for? You know, maybe it is, you know, not the normal time maybe you're doing some kind of hybrid, where you're working some core hours in the office workplace, but because of the childcare and all those things. You're also working some off hours, non standard hours for other tasks that don't require that can be taken outside of that core time. So I think we have to do a little bit of effort on our part as well. And you know, you can stay stuck in that victim conversation of I'm being forced back to work and I have to do this and I have to do that. I think I did. I have to dig through. I think I did a broadcast, Monday minutes program that I do every week on this idea of changing your language of you know, I get to versus I have to, Oh, I like that. Right. So I get to go back into the office and be near my colleagues. I get to go back into the office and share the work in a different way. Like, you know, I also I get to go back into the office and manage the commute. Government you know, that's a that's a less fun part of that. But what do I need? What do I need to ask for? What does it mean for me to manage that commute and so you know, in some employers in the governments in the US, the government tends to be one of them that is, is harder to shift. But you know, this idea of everybody is walking in the door at 8am or 9am and out the door this time, that there might need to be some fluidity that looks a little bit different. And it's certainly easier. When we just treat everybody as one thing. We categorize it and we say everything in this category follows this set. of rules. And I think that that thinking that we got away with in business for so long, I think that we can't stay in that place anymore. And we're going to have to get out of that kind of fit people into boxes and categories and really start to meet people where they are and if you are a leader of people. This means that you're going to put a lot more time and attention for a little bit of time on connecting with your people and asking questions and solving people issues, not just doing the work assignments, the tasks that you've been assigned in your job. And that's a different kind of challenge because so many businesses really took the leadership role away from people in some regards, and put less emphasis on that and filled them up with a lot of other Doer tasks instead of leading tasks.
So really do I really do like the call to leadership's to leader sorry to think about what what's the resistance all about? You know, like understanding that I'm not assuming and I also love, it takes two to tango, you as the employee thinking of my evicting mode and how could I make this work? I get to I really liked that I get to I was excited of commuting back to my son's Montessori because I get to listen to podcasts. And I'm like, It's okay. I had this mandatory extra time. And I was like, what else can I do while I'm driving? I'm gonna listen to podcasts and I really do enjoy audiobooks, audiobooks, which is also my preferred way of reading books right at this moment. By the way, where do we find your book?
So my book is available. It's in international distribution. You can request it through any bookstore should be able to order it from my distributor, Amazon and Barnes and Noble you should find ready made links you can also go to my website, Ignite extraordinary.com. Click on Show up positive and on my page, I have some hot links. But all of that I just submitted for the third time it is a process girl is it a process? The audiobook files so I'm hoping that within the next 30 days, the audiobook is going live and you'll be able to access it on any number of places including iTunes and books in Spotify and all of those things, but yes, I am. I am a huge audiobook consumer as well. And so
it's just fun to have somebody read your book you know that that childhood story repeats itself I really liked to have somebody read me the book while I'm exercising or driving.
I you know when I have two girls, they're they're both teenagers now one is in college was in high school. But after having shot after having baby number two is most specifically the time to just sit and read a book. Just was never there. Yep, it disappeared. And so you know, audiobooks are became the only way I could consume content and as my girls have grown it's like now I'm cooking dinner I'm I'm reading a book I'm drive after I dropped her off at school or before I pick her up from school in the afternoon. I'm listening to my audiobook then I'm chatting with her right that walked when I walk the dog when I exercise when I'm doing laundry, you know, whatever.
That's companion and I back
to the place where I can read two or three books in a week like I did before children because of the audiobook content. So
I'm with you and it also started when I had my baby and I was just walking pleases and he's falling asleep and I'm like, Oh, well, this isn't fun. A book and that was a lot more fun. I want to come back to utilizing positive psychology or like your business name is igniting our extraordinary I love that. Tell me more. I want people to walk away thinking listen, I can turn it on. I can be they can be the creator of my own extraordinary I can I can choose that this is the part of me that's going to be out and about into a world that we do that when perhaps your brain is consumed a little bit with all the things that aren't working or what's wrong with you. Like my client was like what is wrong with me asking lousy questions to their brain and therefore getting lousy answers? What how do we how do we instigate the extraordinary the light to come and shine?
I think that the most important thing that you can do is you need that thought partner. Whether that is somebody that you're hiring as an expert to work with you or whether it's a trusted friend. The truth is, I asked myself lousy questions too. Of course, it is so much easier for me to have clarity about somebody else's business and what's going on for them than it is for me to do it for myself. I have a colleague I work at a co working space. She's a brand strategist. And I often collaborate with her on projects, and we'll talk about content. And she'll be like, Oh, I just love the way you say things. But when it's my own content, I'm just like, tripping all over myself. I can't figure out if I'm saying the right thing if I'm saying it the right way and like all the competence is all the same things that people have when they come to me so just know that you are not alone. And that when we try to do everything, by ourselves and inside ourselves, we are doing a huge disservice to ourselves. And one of my connection shared this statistic I'm not gonna get it exactly right. But it was it was explained so much. And I want to share it with your audience and that is that just thinking just lips silent head going, just thinking our thoughts roll. It's some extraordinary number like 400,000 thoughts a minute. I mean, just just like a freight train. When you and I are in conversation, Olga and I am talking to you. I'm operating at like maybe 1000 words and thoughts a minute. Right? I it just dramatically slows the process down. And so it's, it's not surprising that we ask even if we ask ourselves good questions we don't always get to good answers. Because it's all this silent thing going on in our head and it's going way too fast of a speed for us to really even notice where the good stuff is. And this is why when you work with a coach or maybe you've been in counseling, a lot of times you're told to journal to write things down. Journaling forces you to slow down. It's like having a conversation. So if you're going to try to do it on your own, you've got to either write or speak. You've got to do one of those two things. And then you've got to really look around the around you and listen for better questions. So when
I recently wrote a piece for one of one of my coaches books, and she's a writer, writing a coach for writers writing coach, and then she writes, often books, and she had this piece on journaling, and just explaining the healing power of just writing your own thoughts, even without having that mentor or anybody just writing your own thoughts. And the reason she asked me to do that is because I came to Canada as a refugee. After like having experienced something very traumatic in my life. The audience I've shared this before, but the audience I'm sorry, but my only refuse was a book a notebook that they gave me from the dollar store. And a pen. It was to take notes in the classes I was going to none of which I did. All I did was write down all of my emotions and witness me throughout the first eight months of being in Canada, having to just do all the things and to this date, I promise I swear that that was what made me understand what was going on, shifted the narrative heal what needed to be healed. There was something and I don't know us as a college that you can maybe explain but there is something because you also said to hear yourself right like to speak like what is the power of of witnessing our own thoughts and emotions on paper? A lot is the power behind like, when you are talking conversations like I know when my clients talk about themselves, they often say now that I hear it. It's not that big of a deal or no. Now what I'm saying this was kind of some money is not you know, there's a power behind also listening to ourselves. I agree with you have a mentor like that's been life changing, but I like can you help us get in behind the scenes of what writing the journaling? Or the speaking is so healing are so important to get into our extraordinary.
I don't I call it the magic. I don't know, the exact neuroscience behind that. Although, you know, thank you to the field of neuroscience science of the study of the brain. What we know is when we are thinking we are only using small parts of our brain, when we think and write we are using more parts of our brain when we speak, our whole brain lights up. And so I think that that is sort of the power of it. And I think that you know the other thing that you said that is so true is now that I'm saying it out loud. We psychologically we are pre conditioned to stroke our own ego we love to be right. Of course we write and we look and listen for data that affirms our rightness. And so when it's just this silent conversation going on in your head it's easy to just do that automatic affirmation. Of course, of course, of course that you know, to let to allow that self righteous anger to stew, but when you say it out loud, you have to process it in a different way. You know, I remember I went through this wonderful workshop many years ago, and we did this whole exercise where we had to talk about our resentments. And one of my colleagues that was attending with me. We were in small group doing shit, you know, exchange and Sharon she's like, I don't want to say this because if I say this out loud, then I have to own it. Yep. And that's the other piece of it. You can't dodge it. When you write it down or you say it out loud. It solidifies it in a way that it's you know, it's not just random thing. It's like now it's there. And so now I have to deal with it because I just made it real.
Oh, I love it. So this goes back to your very first conversation of owning responsibility. Yes, right. Because once you write it and you're like, Oh, this is what I think about myself. And you own it. This is what I think about myself, then it gives you decision power. Do I want to continue to think this way or do is this something that I want to continue to engage in or you know, whatever the case might be?
Yes, yes.
That's very interesting. It's true. When you're speaking, you're utilizing a lot more. It's hard for you to speak while you're writing. Or it's hard for you to speak while you're doing you know, something else because it takes a lot of your thinking capacity. It takes so much of your brain capacity to just be in the talking and making sense appears like right it's easy to just speak nonsense while you're cleaning or whatever but to be focus it is it does take a lot more from your brain so I'm sure that has some something to do.
Well and the other thing is that our brains actually lie to us quite a bit. You know, we we allow our brain to come to conclusions and make connections to things and we tell ourselves these internal story, so I call it your inner critic. We all have this voice in the back of our head. That's this constant inner critic, criticizing our lives in the people around us. And that critical voice goes unexamined. When when we're not writing or saying things, but that doesn't change that there's all this criticism, just constantly rolling in the back of your mind. And so in a lot of times, it's it's not really truthful or valid, right or
factual, right? Like there's not yet but if nobody's stopping it to think like hey, are you telling the truth, we just continue to believe it or like let it continue to have its power. Now what did you say you said something along the lines of like you started by sanity. So having a thought partner, somebody that can hear you say the thoughts and can kind of maybe question What did you just say, right, like, yes, like when you have a fear that is sounds logical to you, but when you say it out loud, everybody's like that's, that's so not logical. Let me show you why. That will be one way to have somebody help you see your blind spots, right? Like I think of the psychologist I saw when I was trying to conceive unsuccessfully, having so many thoughts in my head that I was not aware of following that. Person is really helpful to to see the blind spots how I was co creating so much of my own sadness. Now what will be a second step will be a second starting point or not following up point like they've got themselves as a psychologist or a coach or a therapist or a friend like you said, who's like gonna remain neutral to help them out to hear their thoughts. How else can they just free fine that extraordinary from themselves, take it out?
Well, I the second most powerful thing that I often work with people on is that this idea we are highly complex individuals. And that means that we can hold competing commitments. So we can want more time with our family. And yet we can also want this accolade at work or more money or something that's going to demand our time away from our family. Being there, we we hold these competing commitments all the time. And so oftentimes, we need to discover where are where are competing commitments are showing up in our life and how they're contributing to what we are experiencing. So that would be the next place I would say in finding your extraordinary your part of the self limiting equation. Where is that showing up in your life and really beginning to identify and when you identify it, it's not that you have to fix it immediately. That's not the thing, but it's about noticing it and understanding how it is happening in your life. And typically, even though we hold competing commitments, one is winning out over the other. So why is that winning out? Are we okay with that continuing to win out? So if we have this commitment that we want to spend more time with our families, but we also want this huge opportunity at work. That's going to take us away from our family and we take the opportunity at work. We've made the choice, right. So do we make that choice with knowing or not knowing we now are we going to sit in this guilt of not having more time with our family, we made a choice like how do we begin to really reconcile and understand within ourselves and give ourselves permission to make tough choices like that? Because life is not always going to be easy choices or balance
right of like perfect imbalance. That when was realized I just coach somebody, or somebody in I actually run a core of mini course called detox the mind to actually become aware of that reoccurring voice that you were saying that it's in the background, just to create awareness, and somebody was saying she realized that exactly what you're saying she wants. She said therapists and she wants to be like the best and show up. But when she's working her inner dialogue is like it should be with your kids. When she's with her children. Her inner dialogue says you should be working. So when you realize you have conflicting commitments like you call them and you You okay, I'm aware. And I've made a tough choice. Maybe or I'm in between making the choices. What will be a thinking process will be something that could help our audience listening now think like, Okay, I've got this conflict. One doesn't have to win over the other or one does have to win over the other and how do I come at peace with that? What will be something that could help them? Like you said, even sometimes making tough choices is going to have a positive side effect on you like what do we then change the either dialogue realize why we've made the choice we have like what what we're used to just,
well, let's take the example that you gave which is which is an easy one, I think to speak to so this this conflict of when I'm at work, I'm thinking I should be with my family. When I'm with my family. I'm thinking about all the work that I should be getting done. The way I would disentangle that is i in terms of like, where's the extraordinary that where do you so when you are with your family, what creates extraordinary moments with them. In it most of the time, you don't have to have a lot it's not about the the volume of time. It's about the quality. I agree of the time, right? And it's the same thing at work, right? So at work where am I putting my effort and attention? Am I using my time wisely? Am I feeling good about my time? Do I have a good game plan for work so that when we for me and for many people when I have when I can be task focused when I can be outcome focused. I know that today's a good day have I achieved a b and c these are my goals. For the day. These are the top three things and most of us do really well. When we have no more than three, two to three essential things so I might think with my family, what's happening in my family today, you know, when my kids were younger, it was always important to me to have Storytime with them before bed. So when I had requests for work commitments that would take me beyond bedtime. I I got myself out of as many of those as I could. You know, I just said I declined I left early because I chose to prioritize Now did that maybe cost me some opportunities for advancement or whatever. I didn't care. It was like value me on the this content work that I'm doing but I'm choosing to make this time. The thing that is a measure of my success in terms of priority and prioritizing my family the way I want them to I didn't have to be there for bath time. I didn't have to sit at the dinner table every night but it
meant something to you for reading. Yes, yes. Yes. So I
think that that's what I would say. I would say that you know, you've got to define wherever your competing commitments are. They are going to be in struggle. It's not going to be easy resolution. But you then have to really begin to set boundaries around each of those and know what's the most essential thing for you.
I love that because it brings the person back to intentionality like how do I want to feel when I'm with my family? How do I want to feel when I'm at work and creating those boundaries with yourself right like I'm at work right now. Let's focus on that. Let's give it our best I like to think of myself maybe how can I be the most valuable right now? Yes, like if I'm with my son enough, that's playtime. You know, like that's, if I think through the lenses of a three year old what he loved most the most valuable I become to him is when I'm playing dinosaur and when I think through the lenses of my clients or the people I'm speaking to, like right now is how can I be the most valuable is to really be present here to hear what you're saying and ask you relevant questions so that I get to learn from you. And we get to you know, I get, we get to connect, so I absolutely love that way of entangling it and I think normalize normalizing those conflicts. I think we all have them and I think mom's specially we really feel the pool to be all things. And I've really just been intentional kind of solve some of that. I love that.
Yes, I mean I just to ground at one more time for the listeners. Let's take the example because this comes up a lot for working parents. You stay at work instead of attending your child's baseball game, basketball game, soccer game, whatever it might be some sporting event. If you were sitting at work and you keep thinking about your child playing that game, you're distracted, you're not really doing work that you feel good about while you're at work. And so you're losing you're creating this lose lose proposition. I'm not at the game, and I'm not really fully contributing at work. And so I'm a loser in this moment. Right. But if I if if I think about the game and I think um, you know, okay, yeah, the game was going on. Let me get this done. It's like, it's like if I want connection to the game what what does that connection look like? Is it I'm gonna get my work done in time then to go to the to go get pizza with my family afterwards to celebrate the game or am I going to get home in time to sit with my child for dessert? And talk about their day and hear them tell me stories about the game. So you know, you need to sort of decide how you can hook it if that's it there. Your child's achievements and sports matter to you. You've got to find the way to hook into it so that you can let go in the moment. So you can have your when at work and then you can go home and have your when connected to your child's sporting event. You have to craft the win win.
Like create leverage, you know how a reward at the end like maybe I do this with food maybe I shouldn't. But I do this with food with my son. Have you finished the day? It's Thursday, sir. So he really is eager to finish that for what he gets after. So for us we finished work then you get to catch up at Pizza or Yeah, I love that. I really do love that approach. Now you've mentioned briefly and I know time is up. Past the psychology and showing up positively is really about wondering what's actually working and giving more emphasis to that. So for somebody who might be feeling like nothing is working, and there are people out there that think their life is absolutely shambles and that there's nothing that they can do. What do we tell them when they actually feel defeated?
I think that all of us experience times of defeat, but is you have to decide, are you going to let that moment define you? Or are you going to let that be a moment in the larger picture of your life? I'm encouraging you to say that's a moment in the larger picture of your life. And so the whole idea of that repository at the back of the book, when I wrote this book I you know, I wanted even though I it's only produced in paperback, to make it lighter and easier to carry with you wherever you go. But the idea is you're going back into those 50 Show up positive sparks at any point in time. So when you're feeling defeated, I want you to go look through the book, I want you to look at those 50 words and say what's a word? That speaks to me right now and then open up the book and read and I'm going to get I'm going to talk to you about how to actually bring that experience into your life. How you can start to show up how you can start to behave in a way that is so like the word I just flipped to as constructive. Right so yes, I'm feeling defeated. But for the remainder of today, I'm just going to work on being constructive. I'm going to be helpful, productive. How do I do that? And I'm going to give you ideas about ways that you can do that. So it's, it is that slow and consistent the way out of your despair. Is this consistent attention towards something positive? Picking one thing and just doing the work just working on that one idea. And noticing yourself and noticing others around you that are demonstrating that one positive idea. So you that's going to be the only way that I know that you can move past that. Right and that we all have we all have moments when it feels like a lot of things are going wrong all at once. But my I want you to think I'm competent, I'm capable. I'm smart. So how can I how can I add one positive thing in the sea of crap that's flooding my life. What's going to be my my, you know my lifeboat of one little positive yellow lifeboat.
And I would like to say that normally that tiny little baby something that you say in jokingly I guess the only good thing is that I'm breathing. You know, like something you're kind of making fun of you're minimizing because you don't realize actually that's amazing. Without that little thing breathing, you wouldn't be here altogether. So you might be sarcastic towards what is working. And I think we tend to minimize it. So we don't even hear it. But it might be it might be what you think is the tiniest of things, but it's actually so powerful and so great that you have it right if you're healthy. I call it a great day.
Yes, yes. Well, and the other thing I would say is get up and move I mean the other thing that we cannot underestimate the power of nature if you can get out into a park or into a natural setting and just moving your body, changing your location up a little bit and you don't have to exercise difficult, you know, in a hard, cardiovascular way but just walking, just moving your body and getting outside into nature can can be a huge way of lifting some of that oppression from yourself and clearing your mind a little bit, giving yourself space.
I can 100% say I attest to that for my own personal life. I've seen it with my clients, but I don't want you to take her word Rita's word or my word for granted. Don't think like this is a truth just go put it to test prove us wrong. Go move for a full weeks consecutively out in nature, or whatever your heart desires, but move 3030 days 10 minutes. I don't care how long you want to do it. Just do it consistently for a period of time that you set your mind to do. And you come back and tell us this is crap. Or you guys were right. It is I couldn't I couldn't what I couldn't say anything better than that. It is it is the one single thing that I think will solve produce motivation and consistency and energy and happiness and self connection. extraordinary things. Rita, thank you so much for your time. We will have three this website and all of her links, right in our show notes. If you want to order her book, we'll have a special link to do that so that you can go ahead and order that. I highly suggest you do what what wrong could come to you. If you read a book that says step up positively.
And I wrote the book for non readers so I did the best I could there it's it's filled with stories. It's in short little segments. So if you're busy mom like Olga and I, and you think oh, I've got you know, I got 30 minutes to read and you open up your book and you sit down and five minutes later your child comes in with something that requires your attention you'll be able to stop and you won't feel like you've lost your place. You can come back two days later, two weeks later, pick up the book and just keep right on going. It's it's not this dense narrative that really requires concentration I tried to write for the busy female executive that I know I am I hear that you are Olga and can give us something that is meaningful and and matches pace with the lifestyle that we are in.
Well, thank you so much for writing that book and showing me what's possible. My beauty lover could potentially also write a book but thank you also for thinking of the reader as you're writing it. I think that makes it even better. Because we do want to show up positively. We just don't know how to and we often think that we don't have the time to do that. So having a book that offers the tools, the expertise that you have as an organization with like colleges and all the work you've done with busy people in general. I think is going to be a gift to everyone who grew up who gets this book into their own hands. Read up. Thank you. Thank you so much for reaching out at everybody. Go follow read on Instagram on YouTube and LinkedIn, as well as follow her website for more resources and buy the book. See you guys next Monday. recording stopped. So that flew pretty well.
It did. It was a fun conversation. Olga.
I agree. I am going to order your book right now. I think that's very exciting to read. And I just love the work that you're doing. Thank you thank
you so much. Well, I look forward I've listened to a few episodes but had to say I get it I'm kind of hooked so you're here in your in the rotation. Now for the car ride the dogwalk
Thank you. If there's anything that changes between now and the moment we error, let us know and so we can just correct the links. Is there a link to purchase your book here?
No. It should be on the website if you go to okay, perfect page. It's right there. Okay and like I said I'm I thought I had this big over this. The finish line so many times. It's amazing. All the little, you're getting there. But the audiobook is coming. It is coming and it's coming. i My goal is to get it finished before the end of the month. I want it there so you want to out there so as soon as that happens I'll let you know
Yeah, that sounds great. I wanted to ask as well. Oh I don't know yet. When is gonna air I think we're probably now airing in March or April because we only air once a week so fast. But as soon as we do let you know that we're going live with it. We're probably gonna use a video clip of here to just promote our conversation that it goes into our social media that you can grab and use in any way you you want and you can obviously have all the rights to link the podcast episode to your website to your mailing list. We don't we don't have any like we are more than happy to we want more people to be listening to the podcast anyway. So
this works for me as well. Did you have any questions for me before I let you go?
I don't think I do. Um, so are we connected yet on Instagram? So so my it's at Ignite extraordinary is my Instagram and Facebook handles. i You're not a big LinkedIn user, right? You're mainly Instagram.
I want to be LinkedIn because that's where my people are hanging out. So it's it's just a lot of so I don't I'm not a big social use social media. I'm looking to hire this out. Ignite. Ignite business.
Ignite extraordinary. Extraordinary. Yeah. Got you. Well, I I can recommend somebody. I've got a couple of people that do social stuff that if you're looking for
this, yes, that will be so amazing. Thank you.
Yeah, so I've got your email. I'll email you a couple of
ways obviously workbooks, but if you want to also message me where you're going to need to leave and listen to all this. Like, oh yeah, you
should come. It's, it's
I love Italy already some. I'm happy.
It's the very last weekend in March. It's the World Happiness Summit. Okay, and I'll send you the links for that. But yeah, they were in Miami last year. A friend of mine posted about it. And I was like, How did I not know about this? I, I need to be at this event. And so as soon as the information came out, I was like, Yeah, I'm gonna figure out and I get to go to Lake Como how amazing is that? So
I know as soon as you said that, I'm like, wait, what? That will be amazing. Well, thank you so much. We'll be in touch for sure. And I just follow you on Instagram. So
perfect. Father, follow you back. Thank you so much. Okay. Have a great Day. Bye Bye. Bye.